Best annual report - FTSE 100 organisation

With a purpose to help customers Defy Uncertainty, Aviva is keen to shrug off its reputation as an old-fashioned financial services group, with a 320-year-old history, and re-emerge as a modern, digital-first disrupter. It needed an annual report that reflected this dramatic shift, its challenging values and explain simply and clearly why investors needed to choose Aviva.

While the primary audience for its annual report is investors, colleagues and customers, Aviva wanted a report that was easy to understand for all stakeholders – reflecting its value of Kill Complexity – while not compromising on detail or transparency.

Feedback had shown that Aviva’s stakeholders understood its strategy, which they supported, but that they needed to see how it drove growth. They also wanted to understandthe role that Aviva’s values played in driving growth.

Agency MerchantCantos took the design principles of digital into the physical world. It focused on simplicity and linkage, thereby ensuring that any reader – from a ‘paddler’ who browses high level content to a ‘diver’ who wants to go deep – could access what they need.

This approach reduced copy by 20 per cent, replacing it with eye catching diagrams and imagery. A fold out cover provides an ‘at a glance’ review of Aviva’s business, values and culture, strategy and financials. But this simplified approach doesn’t compromise on detail. For example, the Risk section sets out Aviva’s appetite for key important risks on a sliding scale alongside governance, followed by a clear table of risk trends, how these have changed over the year, mitigating actions and the future outlook. At the same time, the investment case is highlighted across two double page impact spreads totalling fewer than 40 words.

The online version is enhanced by a series of videos, featuring colleagues and customers, an animation explaining Aviva’s customer focus and business model and other multi-media content. There are also links to in-depth standalone reports, such as Environmental, Social and Governance data, which can be downloaded by analysts.